..Thus, the lophenteropneust hypothesis was based on misinterpretation of deep-sea photographs of low quality and should no longer be used to support the idea that the enteropneust body plan is basal within the phylum Hemichordata...

..This viewpoint is a useful basis for advancing concepts of homology and for comparing the phylogeny of ontogenies across a series of animals to ascertain the timing and the nature of the underlying ontogenetic changes...

..Although the two pathways may both influence such things as specification of neuronal identity, interactions between them in A/P patterning appear to be minimal...

Developmental expression of the three iroquois genes of amphioxus (BfIrxA, BfIrxB, and BfIrxC) with special attention to the gastrula organizer and anteroposterior boundaries in the central nervous system

..Comparison of developmental expression for amphioxus AmphiTcf and vertebrate TCF/LEF genes indicates that this gene family has undergone extensive subfunctionalization and neofunctionalization during vertebrate evolution...

..In light of recent phylogenetic analyses placing cephalochordates basally in the chordate lineage, we propose that separate signalling centres for patterning the D/V and A/P axes may be an ancestral chordate character...

..These results suggest that amphioxus and vertebrate nodal genes play evolutionarily conserved roles in establishing Spemann's organizer, patterning the mesoderm rostrocaudally and setting up the asymmetrical left-right axis of the body...

..Comparison with hemichordates suggests that anterior Otx and posterior Gbx domains were probably overlapping in the ancestral deuterostome and came to abut at the MHB early in the chordate lineage before MHB organizer properties evolved...

A retinoic acid-Hox hierarchy controls both anterior/posterior patterning and neuronal specification in the developing central nervous system of the cephalochordate amphioxus

..This work highlights the potential of amphioxus, a genomically simple, vertebrate-like invertebrate chordate, as a paradigm for understanding gene hierarchies similar to the more complex ones of vertebrates...

Amphioxus postembryonic development reveals the homology of chordate metamorphosis

..Therefore, TH-regulated metamorphosis, mediated by TR, is an ancestral feature of all chordates. This conservation of a regulatory network supports the homology of metamorphosis in the chordate lineage...

Insights into spawning behavior and development of the European amphioxus (Branchiostoma lanceolatum)